PMDF System Manager's Guide

The format of X.400 addresses is drastically different from the format described by RFC 822, which is what PMDF uses. Thus, a rather complex address mapping is needed to interoperate with X.400.

PMDF-MB400 uses two files to implement this mapping. Both of these files are standard PMDF databases that are created with the PMDF CRDB (OpenVMS) or pmdf crdb (UNIX) utility from an editable text file.

The options TO_X400_DATABASE and FROM_X400_DATABASE in the channel option file may be used to specify the names of the databases that the XAPI_LOCAL channel should use; the PMDF-MB400 configuration utility usually specifies these options as PMDF_TABLE:to_mb400.dat and PMDF_TABLE:from_mb400.dat respectively on OpenVMS, or as /pmdf/table/to_mb400 and /pmdf/table/from_mb400 respectively on UNIX. (If these options are not explicitly set, then PMDF-MB400 defaults to using the files specified via the PMDF_TO_X400_DATABASE and PMDF_FROM_X400_DATABASE logicals (OpenVMS) or PMDF tailor file options (UNIX).) The databases are constructed from text files, usually named to_mb400.txt and from_mb400.txt, respectively, and located in the PMDF table directory.

The general format of these mapping databases is dauntingly complex. Furthermore, most sites have no need for much more than a rudimentary database. In order to eliminate the need to understand the format fully in most cases, the PMDF-MB400 configuration utility generates an initial set of mapping databases.

Another utility, x400_domains.com (OpenVMS) or x400_domains.tcl (UNIX), generates additional rules if you use RFC 2156 mapping tables. See Section 41.10 for details.

The rules contained in the PMDF-MB400 mapping databases follow the same format as the similar databases for PMDF-MR, described in Section 39.3.1 and Section 39.3.2. Note that the Message Router field names ROUTE and USERID are not present in X.400 addresses. All of the other fields, however, apply to PMDF-MB400 as well as to PMDF-MR. In addition, a description of each of the meta-characters usable in the rules is contained in the from_mb400.txt and to_mb400.txt text files created by the PMDF-MB400 configuration utility.